Missouri is bringing a six-game winning streak home

The timing could hardly be better.

Missouri left Austin having completed its second consecutive perfect weekend, beating Arizona 268.05-86.6 Sunday to finish Gambler Days 3-0 and extend its winning streak to six games.

Now the Thunder get a weekend off.

Then everybody comes to their place.

Missouri will host Thunder Days Sept. 4-6 at Thunder Ridge Nature Arena, where the sixth stop of the season will officially bring the regular season to its halfway point.

And the Thunder will arrive there as the hottest team in the league.

Head coach Ross Coleman has said week in and week out that Missouri's practices have been rank, and the Thunder have treated those sessions accordingly. Coleman has even climbed into the chute on a bull himself to help sharpen chute procedure.

And if Coleman isn't the one chewing somebody's behind, one of their teammates is usually more than willing to handle it.

They have pushed each other every week, held each other accountable and made sure nobody gets too comfortable.

Lately, it has shown.

The six-game streak has not required one rider to carry the whole thing, either.

Paulo Eduardo Rossetto has been outstanding.

Julio Cesar Marques continues to put scores on the board and backflips in the air.

And Maverick Smith, less than three weeks removed from being placed on injured reserve with a wrist injury, returned in Austin with his riding hand tied into the bull rope backwards and went a perfect 3-for-3.

Sunday, Rossetto opened with 88.75 points on Max Bet.

Marques added 89.45 on Spade.

Smith finished it with 89.85 on Easy Come, Easy Go.

Missouri also beat league-leading Nashville 353.45-263.70 Saturday night, which matters considerably more now that the Thunder sit only one game behind the Stampede.

The Thunder were 3-5 before this streak started.

Now they are 9-5.

That escalated quickly.

Nashville is still in first. It just has company now

For the first month of the season, Nashville made chasing first place feel a little pointless.

The Stampede won their first eight games.

They became the first team in the league to reach double-digit wins.

For a while, the standings looked less like a race and more like Nashville asking everyone else to keep up.

Austin adjusted the rearview mirror.

Missouri beat Nashville Saturday.

Florida did it again Sunday, 267.2-179.2.

The Stampede left Austin 1-2 on the weekend and 10-4 overall.

Still first.

Missouri and Carolina are both 9-5. Arizona sits one game behind them at 8-6.

And Carolina has already accomplished something nobody else has managed this season.

The Cowboys are the only team to beat Nashville twice.

None of that means the Stampede suddenly have a problem.

An 8-0 start and 10 wins through five events did not happen by accident.

But a lead that once looked comfortable is now one bad weekend from disappearing.

For Nashville, the off week probably comes at a decent time.

The Stampede can give their all-Brazilian lineup a much-needed break, send a few guys home for some relaxation in Brazil and maybe give head coach Justin McBride a little time to work on his breathing exercises when the chute clock starts getting dangerously close to zero.

To his credit, though, the stress has yet to cost them one. Nashville remains one of the teams in the league that has never been disqualified for letting the chute clock expire.

And for everybody chasing them, the week off may come at a terrible time.

Because a healthy Nashville is a dangerous Nashville, especially with the Stampede trying to become the first team in PBR Teams history to win two championship titles.

Florida remembered how to win at exactly the right time

Florida entered Saturday looking like a team that needed the off weekend immediately.

Five straight losses will do that.

The Freedom had slipped to 5-7 after losing to Austin Friday night and were still without reigning PBR World Champion John Crimber.

Injuries have made things tougher, forcing Florida to lean deeper into its roster while Yan Victor Cunha remains on injured reserve.

Then they had to face Arizona, which entered Gambler Days ranked No. 2.

Finally Florida won.

The next afternoon, the Freedom drew Nashville.

They won that one, too.

In less than 24 hours, Florida went from a five-game losing streak to consecutive victories over the teams that had entered Austin ranked Nos. 2 and 1.

That is one way to stop a slide.

Sunday, Austin Richardson started Florida with 89.25 points on Ratchet Strap.

Alex Cerqueira followed with 87.05 on Husky.

Then João Lucas Campos put 90.9 points on the board aboard Cookie.

Florida even got to break out the 90-point chain in Austin, something that had been in short supply during the losing streak.

Florida left Austin 7-7.

Not exactly where a roster this talented expected to be.

But considerably better than where it looked headed Friday night.

Florida finally found momentum.

Now it gets a weekend to see if it can get healthier without losing it.

New York finally has a streak

Bull riding can be a game of streaks.

For most of this season, the New York Mavericks were stuck on the wrong side of them.

Before arriving in Austin, New York had one victory all season.

Saturday, the Mavericks beat Oklahoma.

Sunday, they did it again against Kansas City.

Mauricio Gulla Moreira opened Sunday’s game with 90.75 points on Black Eyes.

Leandro Zampollo followed with 88.95 on The Heat.

And Marco Rizzo added 87.7 aboard El Chapo to finish a 267.4-89.2 win.

Rizzo knows El Chapo pretty well by now.

He has faced the bull three times this season — once during opening weekend in Fort Collins, once Friday night in Austin in what almost felt like a practice run, and then again Sunday when the score counted toward New York’s second straight win.

For the first time in 2026, the Mavericks had consecutive victories.

That does not erase the 3-11 record.

It does change the conversation slightly.

New York’s biggest problem has not necessarily been a lack of talent. It has been getting everybody to fire at the same time.

Rizzo has established himself as the money man at the back of the lineup.

Zampollo may be one of the biggest puzzles in the middle.

He looked strong throughout the Unleash The Beast season, putting together multiple second-place event finishes, but that individual success has not translated as smoothly into PBR Teams competition.

Usually, riders tend to get better in the team format.

For Zampollo, so far, it has almost been the opposite.

If New York can crack that code and get him consistently producing in the middle of the order, the Mavericks suddenly have a much sturdier bridge to Rizzo at closer.

And they have already shown what can happen when they get hot at the right time.

Last season, New York picked up a day one win in Las Vegas and looked dangerous once the postseason lights came on.

That is why the standings still matter even if first place is a long way off.

The Mavericks do not need to turn 3-11 into the league’s best record overnight.

They need to climb high enough to improve their seeding, get healthier and arrive at the PBR Teams Championship with a lineup capable of catching fire at the right time.

Especially considering they have spent much of this season without Hudson Bolton, the 2026 PBR World Finals event champion, while 2022 Rookie of the Year Bob Mitchell has also been sidelined by injury.

There is still a mountain of ground between New York and the top of the standings.

But underdogs do not need much encouragement.

Sometimes they just need a streak.

And the Mavericks finally have one.

Clay Guiton finally got his eight seconds

Sunday's final game was already getting ugly for Austin when Clay Guiton climbed aboard Outlaw.

For Guiton, however, the ride meant considerably more than another score in a Carolina win.

He entered the game 0-for-9 this Teams season.

The comeback had been anything but easy.

Back in February during the Unleash The Beast stop in Salt Lake City, Guiton was knocked unconscious and suffered a grand mal seizure, forcing him to take mandatory time away from competition and give his body time to heal.

The physical recovery was one thing.

Watching him try to find himself again once he returned has almost been harder than watching the wreck itself.

Guiton is young, wildly talented and capable of riding bulls he had been letting get away from him.

And he knew it.

After buckoffs, the frustration had become impossible to miss. He would scream in anguish, beat himself up over the mistake and, at times, look like the disappointment was following him long after the bull had left the arena.

Carolina head coach Jerome Davis saw it, too.

His diagnosis was pretty simple: Guiton was trying too hard.

Instead of riding loose and letting his talent take over, Davis said Guiton was clamping up, not kicking loose and bucking off bulls he should have been able to ride in his sleep.

Nine straight buckoffs only made that harder.

Each one added a little more pressure to the next.

Until Sunday.

Guiton rode Outlaw for 87.45 points.

His first qualified ride of the season.

It came as part of a four-ride Carolina performance that buried Austin 346.85-175.65.

Thiago Salgado opened with 90.8 points on Baylor's Bandit.

Guilherme Valleiras added 87.25 on Pale Face.

Guiton followed.

Then Keyshawn Whitehorse added 81.35 on Ransom.

For Carolina, it was another score in another win.

For Guiton, it looked a whole lot more like relief.

Carolina is 9-5.

One game out of first.

And it got there while one of its most talented young riders spent the first part of the season fighting himself as much as the bulls underneath him.

If Sunday helped loosen that grip mentally as much as it did physically, the defending PBR Teams Champions may have just gotten considerably deeper.

The MVP race is becoming a two-man problem

There are still seven regular-season events left.

So nobody needs to hand out the MVP trophy yet.

But the leaderboard is starting to look less crowded.

Jose Vitor Leme left Austin at 12-for-14 with 1,063.2 aggregate points and an 85.71% riding percentage.

Rossetto is 11-for-14 with 971.1 points and a 78.57% riding percentage.

The gap between them is 92.10 points.

Then comes a much larger gap.

Riquelmi Silva sits third at 796.1.

Sandro Batista is fourth at 785.15.

Elizmar Jeremias is fifth at 711.7.

Leme is 267.10 points ahead of third place.

Rossetto is 175 points ahead of it.

That is no longer a small cushion.

Leme has ridden nine consecutive bulls and continues to pile up points for an Austin team that has not matched his individual pace.

Rossetto, meanwhile, has put together consecutive 3-for-3 weekends and gives Missouri an unusual weapon because he can compete with either hand in the bull rope depending on the matchup.

The rest of the field still has time.

But Leme and Rossetto already have the pedal to the metal, and everyone behind them is going to have to hit the gas soon.

Leme is also two rides from history

As if leading the MVP race were not enough.

Leme left Austin sitting on 92 career 90-point rides at the premier level.

The record belongs to Chris Shivers at 94.

Two more ties it.

Three more breaks it.

Leme moved another step closer Saturday when he rode for 91.45 points during the second installment of the Texas Cup.

Considering he is 12-for-14 this Teams season and has seven regular-season stops remaining, pretending the record might survive 2026 is getting difficult.

The question is increasingly less if.

More where.

There is one strange part to all of it.

Leme is having an MVP-caliber season and chasing one of the sport's most recognizable records.

Austin is 6-8.

The Gamblers have the league’s best rider right now — and they have him locked in for the next four years.

They do not need to win every game between now and Vegas.

Austin knows exactly who is on that roster and what those bull riders are capable of. The priority is getting them there healthy, then laying down the winning hand when the championship is actually on the table.

With that much veteran firepower, nobody should be surprised if the Gamblers save their best cards for Vegas.

Hayden Welsh is worth watching

The MVP standings are not the only place to find riders building momentum.

Hayden Welsh is 5-for-9 this season for Kansas City.

And his most recent make was not subtle.

Welsh rode Cramer for 90.7 points Saturday night in Austin.

That gives him a better-than-55% riding percentage through his first nine outs and a 90-point ride already on the books.

The No. 1 overall draft pick is young, hot and very much just getting started.

He is also hard to miss.

Nicknamed the Ginga Ninja, Welsh’s bright orange hair fits right in with the Outlaw orange he wears from head to toe, and the PRCA cowboy has already started giving Kansas City another reliable option in a lineup that already includes World Champions.

The Outlaws sit eighth at 6-8, four games out of first, with 27 qualified rides in 70 outs this season for a 38.6% team riding percentage.

Not exactly where Kansas City expected to be.

But Welsh has been one of the bright spots.

And he is not the only young piece on the way.

Kansas City’s other draft pick, João Paulo Velasco, just won the 2026 PBR Brazil Championship after winning four events this season and going 4-for-5 at the National Finals in Barretos.

The 21-year-old finished the season 52-for-79 with 1,798 points, 458 ahead of the runner-up, and will now make the jump to the U.S. to join the Outlaws.

That gives Kansas City something interesting to work with.

A lineup with proven World Champions, a No. 1 overall pick already making more bulls than he misses, and another 21-year-old champion coming over from Brazil.

For a rookie, Welsh has not looked overwhelmed by much.

He has looked comfortable.

More importantly, he has looked productive.

Five rides in nine outs is a pretty good place to start.

And if Velasco can bring some of what made him the best rider in Brazil this season with him, Kansas City’s young talent may be arriving at exactly the right time.

The Outlaws may be eighth right now.

But the Ginga Ninja is heating up, another champion is on the way, and there is still plenty of orange left in the tank.

Wicked Intentions set the number to beat

One athlete left Austin without caring much about anybody's standings.

Wicked Intentions was named Bull of the Event after posting a 46.25-point bull score.

That is not just the highest bull score from Gambler Days.

It is the highest of the entire 2026 PBR Teams season.

The mark came Friday night against Clay Guiton, with Wicked Intentions getting him on the ground in 2.03 seconds.

Efficient.

Wicked Intentions is a smaller, younger bull and still has a little learning to do himself.

He can be a little naughty in the chutes, and in Austin he even took the liberty of flipping himself around in there before one of his outs.

So while 46.25 is already the number every bull behind the chutes is chasing, there may still be more there.

He has plenty of stops left to settle in, learn the routine and keep getting better.

Which is a slightly terrifying thought considering he is already the highest-marked bull of the season.

For the teams, the targets are just as obvious.

Nashville owns first.

Missouri owns the longest winning streak.

Leme owns the MVP lead.

And everybody now gets one weekend without another game.

By late August, healthy is relative in bull riding.

Riders are carrying sore wrists, shoulders, knees and whatever else they have managed to tape together long enough to nod for the gate.

Teams have spent five stops juggling injuries, replacements and lineups.

For some, the break is a chance to heal.

For others, it is a chance to regroup.

For Missouri, Florida and New York, it is a challenge to make sure a weekend without competition does not cool down what they lit up in Austin.

Photo courtesy of Bull Stock Media